Where It All Be Gins: Talented W. Soccer Done In By Brown’s Flip Throws And Flicks

In the Harvard women’s soccer team’s 3-2 loss to Brown on Saturday, the 30th minute was the game. Bears freshman Jill Mansfield found senior midfielder Michaela Sewall’s head with a flip throw. Sewall flicked it on toward a group of waiting Brown attackers, resulting in a goal.

On the ensuing kickoff, the Crimson displayed its skill—in this instance, senior midfielder Katie Westfall and sophomore midfielder Maile Tavepholjalern each snaked through several Bears defenders with nifty dribbling linked by a deft pass—but couldn’t quite finish.

Repeat several times over the course of 90 minutes—especially in the first half—and that’s the game, folks.

Harvard knew before the match that Brown’s game plan would consist of Mansfield doing a flip—more of a handspring with the ball touching the ground instead of her hands, really—to generate torque with which to launch the ball toward the 5’9 Sewall. It just couldn’t stop it.

“Every team that played them kept telling us, ‘you know, we lost 2-0, but they scored both goals on flip throws,’” sophomore midfielder Sara Sedgwick said.

“[Harvard coach] Tim [Wheaton] had mentioned to us that she was their target on throw-ins and they had one girl that they used for flip throws,” co-captain back Katie Hodel said. “So we knew going into it that that was going to be one of their main weapons offensively and just didn’t get the job done.”

Sure enough, the Bears scored their first two goals by relying on exactly that pattern.

“We sort of overcompensated for [Sewall],” Sedgwick said. “They scored the first two goals basically because we had two people on her. She wasn’t going to be scoring. She was going to be flicking it.”

“It wasn’t her winning the flick that was scoring the goal,” agreed junior back Liza Barber. “It was us letting them get to the ball first that allowed the goals in.

“The first two goals, she flicked it and that’s great, but we should be there for that second ball and we weren’t.”

Toward the end of the second half, Barber and Sedgwick decided that the 5’8 Barber should try her hand at marking Sewall, and Barber quickly figured out how to neutralize the Brown star.

“If it was over my head and I was in front of her, then it’s over my head and she wins it, whereas when I was behind her, I could read the ball better and I could kind of use her,” Barber said. “I could climb up her a little bit to clear the ball out.”

Unfortunately for Harvard, that realization came after the damage had been done.

“What they did was looked to find her as a target and she looked just to flick it on and then they had other people crashing the box to get the rebound,” Hodel said. “We just did not do a good job of winning the second header, third header in the box.

“You don’t mark people in your own six-yard box and you just don’t deserve to win a game like that.”

But the shame of it was, the Crimson was the more skilled, more talented team.

Led by Westfall—who has been on a tear of late—Harvard created scoring chance after scoring chance, but only converted on a few.

There was Westfall’s eighth-minute free kick that the Brown keeper misplayed, but no one could capitalize on the scramble in the box.

Two minutes later, the Crimson did convert when Sedgwick sent a long ball to junior forward Alisha Moran, who cut back toward the middle of the field and bent a shot into the top right corner of the net.

In the twentieth minute, Westfall slipped a ball to senior striker Alisa Sato behind the defense, but Brown managed to poke the ball away, conceding a corner.

Westfall took it and found Barber, but her header was cleared off the line and Hodel’s left-footed volley on the rebound went just wide.

Two minutes later, Westfall and junior forward Emily Colvin played a clever one-two, freeing Westfall behind the defense, but her shot went wide.

“That’s the story of our whole season, basically,” Sedgwick said. “I have always thought that we’re the better soccer team. We combine really well in the middle, we have very technical players and then against a team like Brown who are just really big and physical and run through things, it’s effective, unfortunately.”

Harvard did manage to equalize in the second half on one final bit of flair when Westfall slid a ball behind the defense to Moran, who redirected it to the bottom left corner of the net in a single touch.

But Brown scored on a corner in the 84th minute to deal a crushing blow to the Crimson’s Ivy title hopes.

“If you look even at the goals that were scored, their three goals came two from throw-ins and one from a corner kick,” Barber said. “Those are completely legitimate ways to score. They scored and they won the game and that’s how you play, but both of our goals broke down their defense and were good opportunities that were created in the flow of the game.”

“The thing is, every goal that we score is a more beautiful goal than any other team’s, but they just get more ugly goals,” Sedgwick added. “Tim’s been pushing us to get more ugly goals...by getting pressure in the box, getting numbers in there.

“That’s how Brown scored—the ball was just bobbling around in the six[-yard box] and they put it away and a lot of times the ball was bobbling around the six and we couldn’t put it away.”

—Staff writer Alan G. Ginsberg can be reached at aginsber@fas.harvard.edu.